After writing about how to upgrade a Cisco ASA license, I received a few messages asking about upgrading the Cisco ASA software. Fortunately, just like upgrading IOS. How to upgrade the Cisco ASA 5505 software. You can download the new ASDM software from Cisco and upgrade that as well (using the same steps as above).

Cisco's Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM) is the GUI tool used to manage the Cisco ASA security appliances. In this blog I'll reveal to you some of my favorite tips, tricks and secrets found inside ASDM. If you haven't dealt with it before, ASDM is a free configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting management tool that comes with the ASA. In a nutshell, ASDM will manage all the features of the ASA appliance including FW, IPS and VPN.

Unlike its big brother Cisco Security Manager (CSM), ASDM is made to configure a standalone ASA one at a time. CSM is the tool you would use to manage and share policy across multiple ASA's, routers, and IPS appliances. First, installing the tool. You can download ASDM from cisco.com or from your ASA itself.

You can then run it inside a browser or download the ASDM launcher so it runs as its own application on your PC. I highly recommend ASDM launcher as the way to go. The ASDM launcher works for both Windows and MAC OSX (requires ASDM version 6.4.5 or later). Once launched it will look like the below image. You fill out the info and away you go.

A few secrets about ASDM launcher. First, to get the MAC launcher working you must install it directly from your ASA using a web browser. Currently, there is not a downloadable.dmg file on cisco.com, only a.msi file for windows.

Second, you see that cool 'run in demo mode' checkbox? This can be a very handy feature and is available to everyone. To enable it, check the box and click on the link it provides. This will take you to cisco.com where you will need to download the ASDM demo.msi package. It will look like this: Once installed, ASDM can then be used in a offline demo mode on a windows or mac computer. Demo mode provides you with several configuration types to choose from so you can make it pretend to be an ASA FW or a ASA FW with IPS or a ASA with SSLVPN, etc. The ASDM demo mode even models event logs.

All in all ASDM demo mode gives you the experience of configuring and monitoring a live ASA. Which brings me to another ASDM secret, demo mode is designed for windows but will also work on MACs. This is not something supported by Cisco or found in there docs. It is more of a hack, but a useful one for those (like me) that don't like to run fusion on their MACs. Here is how you get it to work on a MAC running Lion: -First, On your MAC install the ASDM launcher by connecting to an ASA via a web browser and clicking install launcher. -Second, download and install ASDM demo.msi on a Windows PC.

-Next, Copy the Demo folder contents from C: Program Files Cisco Systems ASDM to your MAC. -On your MAC, open the folder the launcher app is in (usually applications Cisco) and right click on the launcher app. Now click show package contents -A new finder window will open. Navigate to /Applications/ASDM/Cisco ASDM-IDM. Call Of Duty 5 World At War Patch 1.6. app/Contents/Resources/Java/demo -Finally, copy the contents of the windows demo folder into this folder. Now Mac launcher demo should work great! Here is a screenshot of ASDM demo mode on a Mac: And here it is opened up: Now that we have ASDM installed here are some quick tips. • Need to see if there are upgrades for your specific ASA type and version?

Use the check for updates tool in ASDM. This software update wizard is much quicker and error free than going to cisco's website downloading the images then uploading them to the ASA and configuring it to use them. This can all now be done with about 4 clicks right from ASDM.

Huge timesaver! Ghost Is Born Torrent. • • Need to quickly see in/out throughput on ASA interfaces? On homepage click on an interface and below it will show the input and output kbps.

• Need to quickly see your VPN sessions and their details? On homepage view the VPN sessions and click on details to see all the info about your sessions.